[Summary: To save public schools, we have to fix the underlying sophistries and fallacies.] ---- When we contemplate public schools, two things are certain. Almost everyone agrees that the schools are not as good as they should be, given the huge effort and expenditure. Second, everyone has a theory. You can hardly read a newspaper without some expert telling you yet another reason why the public schools are a mess. Much blame is heaped on parents. Other culprits include popular culture, the Internet, teachers, the students themselves, and of course, the perennial favorite, not enough money. We are often told,...

ItÂ’s a new year, and there are all sorts of Â“Best of 2014â€ł lists of this and that posted online. So in keeping with that trend, we thought weÂ’d put up a few lists of our own Â– lists aimed at inspiring free-market conservatives.

Conservatives have regularly complained that the last time the Republican Party held both chambers of Congress and the White House – during six of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office – we missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dramatically roll back the federal leviathan.

Americans are waking up to how bad Common Core really is for education, but its nightmare does not go away quickly. Liberal education bureaucrats ("educrats") are now trying to enforce Common Core through the courts, with one lawsuit already filed in Oklahoma and another likely in Louisiana. In both states the governors tried to get rid of Common Core, but parents are shocked that it may return by court order as unelected educrats claim they have more power than the state legislature and governor combined. The Oklahoma legislature approved a law to repeal Common Core, and the governor signed...

Oklahoma recently took action to protect the state's children from the federal education bureaucracy by withdrawing from Common Core. Common Core is the latest attempt to bribe states, with money taken from the American people, into adopting a curriculum developed by federal bureaucrats and education "experts." In exchange for federal funds, states must change their curriculum by, for example, replacing traditional mathematics with "reform math." Reform math turns real mathematics on its head by focusing on "abstract thinking" instead of traditional concepts like addition and subtraction. Schools must also replace classic works of literature with "informational" texts, such as...

From a macro perspective, the most distressing aspect of America’s education system is that taxpayers spend a lot of money (more than any other people in the world, on a per-student basis) and we get very mediocre results. And it’s getting worse over time. This famous chart, prepared by my colleague Andrew Coulson, shows how spending and bureaucracy have skyrocketed since 1970 while test scores have been stagnant. Blacks and other minorities are the biggest victims. They are trapped in the worst-performing schools, largely because leftist politicians would rather curry favor with union bosses then help the poor. But I...

You cannot be a rational, true conservative who opposes Obamacare but supports Common Core education standards. There, I said it. I’ve chosen now to run for public office because I don’t want to see my kids inherit an America worse off than the one I inherited – it gave me the freedom to get an education, practice medicine, start a business, and raise a family. Unfortunately, all of our constitutional protections from an intrusive government are under attack by the Obama administration. The Washington mindset of tax, spend, regulate couldn’t be farther removed from common-sense Alabama values of fiscal restraint...

Have you had enough of the testing tyranny? Join the club. To be clear: I'm not against all standardized academic tests. My kids excel on tests. The problem is that there are too damned many of these top-down assessments, measuring who knows what, using our children as guinea pigs and cash cows. College-bound students in Orange County, Fla., for example, now take a total of 234 standardized diagnostic, benchmark and achievement tests from kindergarten through 12th grade. Reading instructor Brian Trutschel calculated that a typical 10th-grade English class will be disrupted 65 out of 180 school days this year...

The biggest fallacy in politics is that we need "another Reagan" or more "Tea Partiers" in Congress if we want to save the country. Granted, either would certainly help, but America's structural problems are much bigger than any personnel issues we have in D.C. Even if you're an extremely talented craftsman, you're going to have trouble building a house if the only materials you're allowed to work with are sand and straw. It wouldn't matter if Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were all on the same basketball team if they were only allowed to put three players...

Holly Wrote: Why not also name all the other presidents who used this program?- Rand Paul Versus Barack Obama Dear Comrade Holly, I’m not sure if you’re asking me why I don’t name them in my column or if you are asking Rand Paul why he doesn’t name them in the lawsuit. In either case, the answer is the same: The only president who actually can be forced to do something about it now is the president who sits in the Oval Office. This isn’t a punitive suit seeking damages from the presidents for civil right violations. It’s as suit...

Former high school teacher, Representative Mike Lair (R-Chillicothe), chair of the state education appropriations committee, is bucking to become former Republican representative to the Missouri House from Caldwell, Carroll, Clinton, and Livingston Counties. This week Mike made the terminal decision to hi-jack the state appropriations process to insert “$8 for tin foil hats,” according to Missouri.net. “The line item’s exact language reads, ‘For two rolls of high-density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind reading and control technology.’” The line item is was inserted to chastise all those anti-Common Core activists who seem to have...

The ninth of November marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, probably the most important historical event since World War II and the most important lesson about human freedom experienced within the living memory of most of us. Presumably, next year there will be more of a commemoration, but the salient question now is how this lesson is being taught in the nation’s classrooms. For while those of us in our forties and older remember the fall of communism and its causes, today’s teenagers are wholly in the dark. What, then, are the high-school students of...

No city has embraced the school choice movement more than New Orleans. Yet over the past few weeks, theÂ Wall Street JournalÂ has been takingÂ a close lookÂ at how the idea is working out, and the results have been decidedly mixed. The biggest problem is that there simply arenâ€™t enough high-quality schools to go around. The city grades each public or charter school on an Aâ€“F scale, and only 14 percent of seats were in schools with a B or higher. Given the the dearth of high-performers and the limited number of seats at these schools, parents are often left to choose...

In six weeks there will be a little-followed election that could help determine the path for education reform in the United States for a long time to come. At issue is whether a local school board has the authority to tell the government employee union—you know, the forces of darkness that are preventing commonsense education reform in our schools? -- to take a hike. In July 2012, that’s exactly what Douglas County, Colorado school board decided. After months of negotiations the school board reached an impasse with the union as their contract expired. Previously the union has demanded that the...

For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upper-mobility and a rich shared-learning experience. Young Americans for four years took a common core of classes, learned to look at the world dispassionately, and gained the concrete knowledge to make informed arguments logically. The result was a more skilled workforce and a competent democratic citizenry. That ideal may still be true at our flagship universities, with their enormous endowments and stellar world rankings. Yet most elsewhere, something went terribly wrong with that model. Almost all the old campus protocols are now tragically outdated or...

Before Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department move forward with a lawsuit to block vouchers for thousands of low-income students trapped in failing Louisiana public schools, he ought to speak to parents whose children benefit from the statewide voucher measured called the Louisiana Scholarship Program. One of those parents is Lakisha Fuselier. Fuselier is a single mother of four. Her 8-year-old son, Albert, is a part of the voucher program. A spokeswoman in Gov. Bobby Jindal's office emailed me her story, which first appeared in The Daily Advertiser last December. "Lakisha Fuselier wanted to do something to help...

Apparently, under the new Common-Core standards, correct answers don’t really matter. At least that’s according to a “curriculum coordinator” in Chicago named Amanda August. “Even if [a student] said, ’3 x 4 was 11,’ if they were able to explain their reasoning and explain how they came up with their answer really in, umm, words and oral explanation, and they showed it in the picture but they just got the final number wrong, we’re really more focused on the how,” said the common core supporter and typical liberal, Amanda. Off course this reasoning explains quite a bit regarding our nation’s...

It's tough to find a job everywhere: in the US, in China, in Europe, and in India. Think education is the answer? I don't. Economic Times reports amillion engineers in India struggling to get placed in an extremely challenging marketSomewhere between a fifth to a third of the million students graduating out of India's engineering colleges run the risk of being unemployed. Others will take jobs well below their technical qualifications in a market where there are few jobs for India's overflowing technical talent pool. Beset by a flood of institutes (offering a varying degree of education) and a shrinking...

In a badly botched answer to the final question during this year's Miss America Pageant, Miss Utah Marissa Powell stammered something unintelligible about men and women in the workplace and saw the crown slip away. Her answer has already gone viral, but she did manage to hit on something true about the current state of the U.S.: education-wise, we're in trouble. Her mumbled advice to "create better education" is actually valid in light of a chronic achievement gap that could threaten America's economic future The Renewing America initiative released its federal education progress report today under the moniker "Remedial Education."...

Author’s Note: If you are concerned about this kind of spending in higher education, please contact Governor Pat McCrory at http://www.governor.state.nc.us/. His remarks about liberal arts education have been right on target. He gets it. I think the time has come for a line item veto in higher education. The people of North Carolina are being bankrupted by higher education spending that is simply not academic in nature. The problem was once confined to UNC’s flagship campus in Chapel Hill. But now it has spread like a cancer throughout the entire UNC system. For example, this week (February 4-8,...

Education is a mystifying field. You can study it for years but remain forever on the surface. The media, for example, endlessly discuss every aspect of public education. But nothing improves; and nobody explains why we spend so much money but get mediocre results. (Note: many pundits believe the public schools are now so bad they are a threat to this country’s survival.) Here’s my main theme these days. We must look deeper. Until we grapple with the underlying causes, nothing will improve. We have to move inside the machine and figure out how it works. One thing we know...

Even though I’ve been fortunate to attend a few national conventions, I still get a thrill when I meet (for the first time) a favorite politician to whom I’ve donated money, or one of pundits that I read on a daily basis. (My wife would stop at nothing to get a picture with Bret Baier of Fox News.) Or it may be a particular speech. But at this year’s convention, my most special memory was a movie. Who would have ever thought that, for a guy from Hollywood, schlepping to steamy Tampa would elicit a big screen moment? We were...

The educational establishment is ramping up its attack of “Won’t Back Down,” a fictional movie of a parent and teacher teaming up to take over a failing school through a “parent trigger” law. The movie will be released nationally on Sept. 28. The National School Public Relations Association is now working with the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers in issuing talking points to members about how to best dismiss the point of the movie without actually looking like they’re attacking it. “We urge you to consider applauding the passion and activism of parents in the movie. You...

It says something about today’s public education reality that the two sides in the teachers’ union dispute in Chicago are the union and the mayor. Allegedly the point of schools is to educate children. But which side in this dispute has sole interest in children and their parents? The answer, of course, is neither side. Unions are about the economic interests of the teachers. The mayor is about his budget and the economic interests of the city. No one solely represents the interests of the kids. It’s not to say that the union or the mayor has no interest in...

A chorus of Washington, D.C. Democrats are calling on Mayor Vincent Gray to resign amid allegations his campaign engaged in “underhanded deeds” to win his race against incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty in 2010. The Washington Times reports : “Three D.C. Council members called on embattled Mayor Vincent C. Gray to resign Wednesday, just hours after he defended his integrity in his first public comments since federal prosecutors outlined a politically damaging ‘shadow’ effort by members of his 2010 campaign. “David A. Catania, Mary M. Cheh and Muriel Bowser became the first city leaders to argue that Mr. Gray is no...

Howard Dean: "I need to take you on a tour of America's public schools; that's what I need to do." Joe Scarborough: "I've been fighting for education reform for a generation, and every time we've tried to reform schools . . . it was the Democratic party on the House floor and on the Senate floor and in the White House that stood in the way. I do not need lectures from you on education reform." And that was the polite part of the exchange! But seriously, Joe Scarborough and Howard Dean had a big-time brawl on today's Morning Joe...

In May of 2008, Gov. Rick Perry convened an unprecedented joint meeting of the boards of Texas’s three major university systems — the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech — and laid out an agenda for reforming the state’s higher-education system, a plan to lower costs and raise the quality of both teaching and research. There is real reason for Governor Perry’s concern: Tuition, though still quite low in Texas, has been climbing for years, an unwelcome development, and the state’s higher-ed flagship, the University of Texas at Austin, barely makes the top-50 list in the college rankings,...

"...On the fraught issue of school choice, his foundation has been a strong advocate of charter schools, and Mr. Gates is particularly fond of the KIPP charter network and its focus on serving inner-city neighborhoods. "Whenever you get depressed about giving money in this area," he volunteers, "you can spend a day in a KIPP school and know that they are spending less money than the dropout factory down the road." Mr. Gates is less enamored of school vouchers. "Some in the Walton family"—of Wal-Mart fame—"have been very big on vouchers," he begins. "And honestly, if we thought there would...

According to the New York Times’ David Brooks, Republican hardliners against tax increases are turning the GOP into a “psychological protest” rather than a “normal political party.” Brooks is upset that after having forced Democrats to come far closer to their position on taxes and spending in order to cut a deal to extend the national debt ceiling, there is little chance the House majority will embrace what he considers to be “the deal of the century.” To Brooks, the Democrats’ offer on the debt ceiling is the “Mother of All No-Brainers,” and his anger at the GOP’s insistence that...

The Coalition for Higher Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out. The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always...

In 2009, 50% or more of all fourth grade students in 10 American cities received “below basic” scores on a federal reading test. But it gets worse – only 18 cities participated in the test. It takes a great deal of creativity and chutzpah to defend public schools that produce results like these year after year, but the so-called liberal media is giving it a shot. Apparently adopting the old “best defense is a good offense” technique, the Left is trying to attack everyone who wants to reform the nation’s failed public schools. Lately they have seized on accusations against...

The Higher Education Problem and Some Solutions Abraham H. Miller A recent study of college undergraduates showed that there was no significant learning, critical thinking development, or writing improvement among nearly half of college students by the end of the sophomore year. At the end of four years and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses, more than a third of college students learned little to nothing. No one who has taught in a college or university in the last several decades would be surprised by those findings. A lot of people go to college...

Say this for Chris Christie — when he draws a line in the sand, he doesn’t quickly erase it in the name of political expediency. Unlike another local governor we could name. New Jersey’s chief executive made it very clear last week that he’s committed to genuine educational reform, and he’s not about to let anyone stand in the way. Not even his own education commissioner. Christie publicly upbraided Commissioner Bret Schundler for making excessive concessions to the Garden State’s teachers union in return for its valuable support for New Jersey’s application for federal Race to the Top funding.

Hillsdale College Launches Charter School Initiative Hillsdale, Mich. — Hillsdale College announced today it has launched a K-12 charter school initiative to have a positive and lasting effect on the education of young Americans. The school will be based on a classical liberal arts model and will have a strong civics component that will equip students to understand and defend the principles of the American Constitution. “Reform of American public education, to be successful and good, must be built on a foundation of classical liberal arts learning,” said Phil Kilgore, Director of Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative. This is...

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia survived the first cut Thursday in the Obama administration's unprecedented $4 billion school reform contest. This Story 15 states, D.C. make first cut in Race to the Top school reform contest R.I. district may reverse firing of high school teachers See our Higher Ed page for college news & admission advice at washingtonpost.com/higher-ed Analysts pointed to some surprises among the finalists, including New York, Ohio and Kentucky. It was also notable that the most populous state, California, missed the cut even though the state's legislature approved a significant school-improvement plan. Federal officials say...

New Summertime Blues by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 02, 2009 President Obama doesn’t just have plans to reform American policies on health care, national security, and international relations—he also has great plans for education reform, including lengthening both school days and school years. Although the president is aware that “longer school days and school years are not wildly popular” with any student or family, he appears to believe that longer school days and years are necessary to compete with other nations’ education systems, despite the fact that American students already spend more time in school than their primary competitors...

Thank you Dr. Moseley for your gracious introduction and your dedicated leadership to Franklin College. I am grateful to the College for extending to me this extraordinary opportunity to share in the celebration of the school’s 175th anniversary. This is truly a signal milestone and one in which all of us gathered this evening and all who have contributed to the rich history of this great institution take enormous pride.

When my kids were younger, one of their favorite stories was Dr. Seuss' "If I Ran the Circus," a book that describes young Morris McGurk's dream for putting together the most amazing circus ever, a show that will be, in McGurk's words, Colossal! Stupendous! Astounding! Fantastic! Terrific! Tremendous! I have similar dreams - only, rather than dreaming about a fantastic circus, I dream of putting together the ideal school. I'd start by ungluing students from their seats. There would be plenty of movement in my dream school. Every K-12 student would have P.E. every day, with classes teaching swimming, dancing...

Teaching as a Martial Art by: Bethany Stotts, November 25, 2008 Inner city teachers have long talked of getting “combat pay” for teaching in troubled schools but now they are taking the military analogy to a whole new level. At a recent seminar at the Center for American Progress (CAP), Julie Kowal, a senior consultant at Public Impact, compared incentives for educators to the hardship pay offered to soldiers, although her ignorance of military culture was quite telling. “I mean, as my colleague put it, the military has been recruiting [an] all-volunteer force to go die for years, and they’ve...

Scholar, Survey Thyself by: Malcolm A. Kline, November 19, 2008 Q: How do you look at what is happening on college campuses today and not find a left-wing bias? A: You interview professors and ask them if there is one. Despite an admirable, earnest and exhaustive attempt to do otherwise, this winds up being the tack taken by the authors of Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities. “Our national survey of faculty political attitudes in 2007, like most earlier surveys, showed that faculty members were generally left-liberal in their political orientations,” the authors of Closed Minds? write. “We...

America’s Schools Need Upgrade by: Irene Warren, November 17, 2008 Veteran educator Tony Wagner presents a cogent argument in his new book entitled, The Global Achievement Gap, in which he argues that American schools, both public and private have missed the mark when it comes to teaching our children the survival skills needed in order to obtain gainful employment. Wagner, who is also the co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education makes no bones about it: change the way we teach our children, or the “net generation,” as he calls them, will be playing...

While main stream media dismisses the question of Obama's relationship with radical professor William Ayers an unrepentant exterrorist bomber. Which Obama has consistantly lied about. It is true Obama was a mere 8 when Ayers,(son of Thomas Ayers CEO of utility giant Commonwealth Edison,) was busy organizing riots and tossing bombs. Obama teamed up with him to distribute over 100 million dollars through a series of funds set up by Ayers which was intended to advance education but wound up given to organizations promoting radical causes. Leaving applicants promoting worthy educational projects flatly turned down . What they did with...

From Crayons to Condoms by: Deborah Lambert, October 09, 2008 The verdict is in. The new book, From Crayons to Condoms by Steve Baldwin and Karen Holgate is a must-read for parents everywhere. Those who know Steve Baldwin may recall that he has been shaking up the education community ever since he chaired the California Assembly Education Committee and reported the ugly truth about what was going on inside public schools—to the detriment of our children. The book describes nightmare scenarios that many parents will recognize—from the way that administrators routinely ignore parents to the fact that schools have become...

Campaigning at town halls across America, I am often asked about my plans to reform our public schools. And the answer begins with two points on which most everyone agrees: Every public school child deserves a first-rate education. And too many of our schools are producing second-rate results. Beyond that, the education debate divides quickly into two camps. Some say all that's needed is more taxpayer money, along with more prekindergarten and after-school programs. Others believe that the basic structure of the education system is flawed, and that fundamental reform is needed. You can put me squarely on the side...

Expanded Learning Time or Money? by: Rachel Paulk, July 24, 2008 The Center for American Progress recently held a panel pushing for the implementation of and lauding the benefits of expanded learning time (ELT) programs in schools nationwide. Most programs involve either lengthening the actual school day or increasing the number of days in a school year; to date, mostly charter schools and some elementary and middle schools have been able to integrate a functional ELT program into their curriculum. Proponents assert that the added time helps teachers expand and further expound on core classes like reading and math, though...

Last week, the California Supreme Court effectively banned home schooling, leaving about 166,000 children truant, and 166,000 parents legally liable. Here's the full story. From the article: "The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union. 'We're happy,' said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. 'We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.'" Of course, I understand the intention of the California Teachers Association. They want to make sure every child is being taught by a reputable and educated instructor. But they also...

4) The amount of busy work given to our students is shocking Over the years, I've tutored several dozen high school students. Nearly all of these students struggled with effectively dealing with the amount of work they were expected to complete every night. This tremendous amount of scholastic vapidness dumped upon America's youth every night is destroying their reasoning abilities. After all, how can they learn to properly access what's important in their own lives, if their teachers are willingly blurring the line between trite and terrific? It's plainly clear in my experience that the current public school curriculum is...

AmeriCorps Blowup by: Bethany Stotts, February 25, 2008 With a burgeoning achievement gap for minorities and low-income students, and American students performing poorly on international tests, many agree that America needs significant educational reform. For Center for American Progress (CAP) affiliates, at least, the front lines of that reform start with the AmeriCorps... CAP panelists... all praised the AmeriCorps for its vital role in education, highlighting essential tasks performed by members such as • mentoring, • conflict resolution or mediation, • monitoring recess, • and tutoring.... A 2006 Washington Post article estimates that non-NCCC AmeriCorps members each cost the government...

Public Service Academies by: Amanda Busse, January 11, 2008 A panel debate over the need for a U.S. Public Service Academy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Wednesday left some wondering whether its benefits would be worth its costs. “It’s got great potential, but it definitely needs more support from Congress, and taxpayers might have a problem with it,” said Brianne Aderly, a member of the non-profit group City Year, who came to watch the debate. The Public Service Academy is the brainchild of Chris Meyers Asch, 33. A Teach for America veteran who co-founded the project, Asch wants...